Comments on Fewer English Jobs, More Language Jobs

• Posted by Truth B Told on December 18, 2007 at 8:40am EST

• >> She said it was important for scholars to reach out to students’ parents and others to push for sections to be taught by permanent faculty members who receive appropriate levels of support. She said that the fundamental issue is that in higher education today “we have a job system where there are simply not enough full-time positions.”

  LOL. Good luck getting parental support for the humanities when parents know that humanities degrees do not create job opportunities, even for those who have a Ph.D. in the humanities.

• Posted by Melocoton on December 18, 2007 at 10:25am EST

• Truth B Told--there are not enough of one particular kind of job for English PhD.s--that doesn't mean that undergraduate humanities degrees aren't marketable in many other kinds of jobs. You need to read more closely.

  I don't know what Feal exactly has planned (probably another resolution) but universities will not change their employment practice until significant pressure is brought to bear on them--by faculty unions, parents, and undergrads.

  And author of article--if you're measuring absolute numbers of advertised English jobs, don't you necessarily need to consider all postings, not just those on the MLA list?

• Posted by midwest prof at Community College on December 18, 2007 at 10:25am EST

• I have been continually disappointed in how little the MLA has done to work against the outsourcing of English positions to part-time faculty. This has been a clear issue since the early 1990s. For a long time the MLA ignored this, and then they came up with very weak suggestions for the better treatment of adjunct labor and TAs.

  When I started graduate school, MLA said that there would be tons of job openings because of projected retirements. However, the profs wouldn't retire, and when they retired they were often replaced with cheaper PT faculty.

  I believe that the MLA sold out the newer graduates during the 1990s. I have gone to many MLA conferences. I have talked to many older tenured professors, some in officer positions at MLA, with no clue what the job market is really like. I was lucky to get a tenure track job at a community college, and you would think that I have leprosy from the responses I've gotten from some of the senior professors--including some on my dissertation committee.

  The MLA's emphasis on high theory in the 1990s also contributed to the decline of the Humanities, imo. The MLA basically got on a bandwagon that made Literature seem incredibly irrelevant to most people. Most English jobs today are in Composition, the practical sister of Literature. And the rift between Lit and Comp continues.

  I'm heartened to see an increase in foreign language positions. I hope that continues, although I don't see evidence of this where I work.

• We're all working all the time, just not at "jobs"
• Posted by Marc Bousquet , author, How the University Works, at Santa Clara University on December 18, 2007 at 10:40am EST

• It's actually really heartening to see MLA staff leadership say things like“we have a job system where there are simply not enough full-time positions." This is a big step forward from the analysis of the 80s and 90s in which staff members read tea leaves to see whether tenure-stream positions might magically increase.

  Since we now know that the tenure stream won't increase by prayer or magic, and that the wholesale conversion of our work to "student funding" and permatemp assignments was a planned, intentional assault on tenure by management: the only question is what will the disciplinary associations do to struggle against management's continuing plans?

  MLA can do a lot to defend tenure. It's got a budget and resources far larger than AAUP. It has a respected national profile. Without engaging in censure, it can spend lots more on aggressive public relations, lobbying, the creation of model legislation, and the publication of best practices/worst practices articles in a variety of fora. It is not, as Phyllis Franklin once told me "AAUP's job" to do these things. It's everyone's job, especially the disciplinary associations.

  We're all working all the time. There's plenty of "need" for us to work. MLA can and must do more to ensure that all that work comes in the form of tenure-track jobs. It's time for MLA to make a public-relations assault on the sexist, racist, exploitative job system.

  By the way, an interview with Michael Berube on some of these questions will soon be up on the video weblog at http://howtheuniversityworks.com

• Drought victim
• Posted by queenofthejungle on December 18, 2007 at 11:35am EST

• I was one who graduated with an English Lit. Ph.D. in the "drought" of the mid-nineties. My institution supported the students going on the job market with "interview workshops" -- telling us things like "be sure to leave enough time between your interviews at MLA, so that if one runs over, you still can make it to the next on time." After one of these, I got into the elevator with my depressed peers and one of us finally broached the subject -- "Do you have any interviews yet?" No one did. Our professors had been sharing their own experience of the boom years, not realizing that the market had gone bust.

  I opted out of the "gypsy" track so many others fell into, where they accepted one-year positions here and there, moving from state to state. Others became serial adjuncts, teaching at three or four different institutions, commuting constantly, and still not having any health benefits or retirement plans.

  I returned to my previous "pink collar" profession. It felt like a failure to me, going back to something I'd been trying to leave behind. But at least I had health insurance and other benefits, and I was not bringing home stacks of freshman essays to read every night. I've now moved on to a full-time, non-tenure teaching track in a different field. It's still not what I really want to be doing with my life, but it's a step in the right direction.

  I don't know what the solution to this problem is, but it's not Feal's disingenuous "reaching out to parents and students." Something she might have greater influence over (but less of a vested interest in doing) would be to stop churning out the glut of Humanities Ph.D.s

• Posted by Truth B Told on December 18, 2007 at 2:30pm EST

• "Truth B Told—there are not enough of one particular kind of job for English PhD.s—that doesn’t mean that undergraduate humanities degrees aren’t marketable in many other kinds of jobs. You need to read more closely."

  Melotocon: I have an undergrad humanities degree, so I've lived what I'm talking about. A B.A. in English is not a valuable degree in the eyes of most employers. That's why I did my M.A. in a field that had more career opportunities.

  A B.A. in the humanities is good only as a pre- track: pre-law, pred-med, even pre-wed.

• Post-modern skills?
• Posted by Dr. F. Gump on December 18, 2007 at 6:20pm EST

• I don't know if it is possible to skip from pre-historic to post-modern, but I stayed relatively far away from the modern literary criticism movements of the past eight decades; most seemed just oh too radical for my tastes. (yeah, pre-historic)

  Instead, I read mostly Chronicle of Higher Education articles and want ads. Re-directed my graduate study into Educational Administration. While on that journey, read a lot professional association studies and government studies about public outrage over various modernist camps' methods.

  Does this make me post-modern or am I still pre-historic?

  I just seems (and has always seemed thus) that individuals too strongly steeped in one school of literary criticism were entirely too sure of themselves and distainfully arrogant of any who questioned.

  Uh, don't count on questions about your school of literary interpretation/criticism if you do get that job interview; it will be much more along the lines of: "Could you please tell us about some of your successful experiences in getting Johnnie to read* ANY of the assigned textbook?"

  (*from ANY critical perspective)

• What Works In the Wider Job Market
• Posted by Scrawed on December 19, 2007 at 2:10pm EST

• Perhaps it's a "greener grass" mentality, but my perception is that English degrees at the undergraduate and masters' levels are actually more marketable in the wider job market than foreign language degrees. I'd guess this is because English degrees are considered as "known quantities" and the coursework viewed as relevant to many of the tasks involved in certain common positions (e.g. editing, reporting, advertising).

  Foreign language degrees may involve substantial comparative literature coursework or a similar quantity of non-literature analysis work (in such fields as, for example, political science and economics). However, screening by degree held usually eliminates these degree holders from consideration for these types of (language- oriented)positions.

  Furthermore foreign-language degree holders often find themselves competing against native-language instructors that may or may not hold graduate degrees in the language in question. These are sometimes hired in cooperation with other (foreign) institutions on a rotating basis, are sometimes US degree holders of foreign-language degrees in the languages of their host countries (I'd estimate 50% of my masters' courses were occupied by native Chinese speakers), or are sometimes relatives of other faculty - often hired at discount (the "two-for- the-price- of-one- and-then-some" scenario). Hence there may be an increasing number of positions available in foreign language relative to English, but a rather larger set of pools exist to fill them from - and ultimately for most positions in this area advanced degree requirements may be relaxed.

• Posted by from abroad on December 22, 2007 at 11:35am EST

• There are many jobs abroad especially in private universities. While there are institutes that have TEFL certified teachers, there is a lack of instructors that are qualified to teach higher level English classes (especially at the university level).

• community colleges
• Posted by Christine on December 29, 2007 at 11:45am EST

• Hey, Mid-west prof--

  I hear you! I too am at a community college, something I once scoffed at.

  I too was treated as a leper, even at the MLA by grad students who were seeking university positions!

  But seeing how miserable some of my colleagues are in the political, competitive stew of a university department, I m soooo glad to be at a humble community college!

  Aren't you?

  Christine in Baltimore